Coffee Monitor: Ethiopia
Independent evidence on Ethiopia's coffee economy · Seattle, Washington
Archive · 2006 to present
Coffee Monitor did not arrive at the farm-gate question this year. The same question runs through the Starbucks trademark dispute, the founding of the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange, the traceability debates, and every export record announced since 2006.
The original posts stay at Poor Farmer, where they were written and where they carry their dates. This page indexes them rather than copying them. A contemporaneous record is only worth something if it stays contemporaneous.
Ethiopia sought to trademark the names of its coffee regions, and the argument that followed was about who owns the value in a name. The dispute drew the attention of the international press and put the question of the grower's share into public view for the first time in a generation. The writing from this period established the pattern that Coffee Monitor now formalises: check the claim, find the source, follow the money to the farm.
The ECX was presented as the mechanism that would deliver transparent prices to farmers. Writing from this period examined its board composition, its price transmission, and the gap between what it promised growers and what it delivered. The exchange's own chief executive published a response naming the author, which remains the clearest evidence that the record was being read where it mattered.
Who is allowed to sell to whom, what a lot can be traced back to, and what the domestic market is permitted to absorb. These are not technical questions. They determine whether a premium paid in Seattle can reach a grower in Jimma, and most of the time it cannot.
The current argument as it was first made, published across five parts and closing on the day the Prime Minister announced the export record to parliament. It is the direct antecedent of the working paper.
On Poor Farmer
Poor Farmer has run since 2006 and remains the canonical, contemporaneous record: first person, argued, and dated. Coffee Monitor is the disciplined evidence platform that sits alongside it. Neither replaces the other, and the older one is not being tidied up.